269. FOIL-WRAPPED PROPAGANDA

From the Archives (20 December 2006) I suppose I could think of this as preparation for Danishgrrl's and my looming trip to the truly frightening Jehovan-dripping borough of South Carolina, but I am nevertheless annoyed at this holiday card that someone placed in my mailbox:

The holly-bordered exterior reads

BELIEVE IN MIRACLES

The Virgin Birth...
"Behold, a virgin shall be with child ... and they shall call His name Emmanuel ... God with us." Matthew 1:23

The Resurrection...
"...Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen..." Mark 16:6

The Soon Return...
"...I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:3

and the interior reads

Wishing you the joy of believing ... the celebration of life ... and the peace of eternal hope in Jesus Christ.

May Your Christmas Be Blessed.

" ... He who believes has eternal life." John 6:47 NASB

To me, seeking real-life solutions to the particular difficulties of our earthly existence (random disease and limited lifespans and human frailty and violence and ignorance and loss and perplexingly annoying religious commands to cut my hair or never cut my hair or wear a dress or or wear a burqa or whatever) instead of bowing prostrate before some made-up yahoo that religious leaders use to extort money from their congregation is humanity's best shot at curing disease and finding real redemption, so how 'bout you keep your superstitions out of my mailbox Yo.

Meanwhile, Danishgrrl's kids are guilt-tripping her about "ruining" their holidays by introducing change and refusing to invite her ex-husband to spend the day with us and we don't like this one bit. The jerk is encouraging this too while e-lecturing her about honoring the fact that the kids don't want change—and this from the man who couldn't be bothered to purchase a real tree for them.

Grr!

So here's my pre-New Year's resolution: I will not be silent if my bigoted Aunt Becky has anything to say about my so-called sinful life style this year. I have lost my patience and have armed myself with the HRC's "Answers to Questions about Marriage Equality" that I can hand to her if she starts. (I'll also threaten her with donating them to her church's library in her name—maybe THAT will get a reaction!)

I’m also thinking of making a bumpersticker that says "Can I Vote on Your Marriage?" and affixing it to my car before the trip.

So yeah. Here I sit, dreading Christmas down south, dreading Danishgrrl discovering the sad situation that was my childhood, but very glad that the bullethole my mom put in the kitchen ceiling way back in 1979 when she tried to violently off herself was at least patched a few years back, so we don't have to stare at it or the blood spots on the ceiling anymore.

176. SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS

From the Archives (28 December 2005)

A CHRISTMAS POEM
by Robert Bly (from Morning Poems)

Christmas is a place, like Jackson Hole, where we all agree
To meet once a year. It has water, and grass for horses;
All the fur traders can come in. We visited the place
As children, but we never heard the good stories.

Those stories only get told in the big tents, late
At night, when a trapper who has been caught
In his own trap, held down in icy water, talks; and a man
With a ponytail and a limp comes in from the edge of the fire.

As children, we knew there was more to it—
Why some men got drunk on Christmas Eve
Wasn't explained, nor why we were so often
Near tears nor why the stars came down so close,

Why so much was lost. Those men and women
Who had died in wars started by others,
Did they come that night? Is that why the Christmas tree
Trembled just before we opened the presents?

There was something about angels. Angels we
Have heard on high Sweetly singing o'er
The plain. The angels were certain. But we could not
Be certain whether our family was worthy tonight.

Well, Christmas is over. The goose got fat and the chickens and the children came home to roost and discover just how many stories that we’ve told ourselves for years are, in fact, inaccurate (at least if our siblings are to be believed).

This Christmas, I also learned that my older sister is the type of person who will back a truck down the hill and start randomly tossing perfectly good furniture and dishes and other random items out of my mother’s basement and into a pile destined for the dump.

Can I just say that it rankles my ass that my sister took it upon herself to decide what family items are disposable?

So I asked my mother if she was comfortable with this approach and she said, “Well, you kids can always sort through everything when I’m dead.”

Poke.Spike.In.Eye.

In.Out.In.

Ouch.

... and I still don’t know if this purge was something Dee discussed with my mom or if she just decided that my mother doesn’t keep her house up to Dee’s gated community standards, and so took it upon herself to toss someone else’s stuff.

Some of the items were worth a fair amount of money and I knew I could sell them pretty quickly at an antique auction, so I grabbed what wasn’t already broken to sell for my mother—a nice, solid oak chair; a huge old jar like the ones that country store owners used to fill with pickles; a large distressed wooden box that I wrote my name in when I was, judging from my handwriting, six years old (which I might just keep for myself); brass and crystal and carved wooden doorknobs with accompanying brass plates; my father’s old hacksaw; a cool old Kreamerware kitchen tin with “Sugar” written on it in turquoise script, etc.

Many other items were already broken or buried at the bottom of the pile, just like the perfectly functional (and valuable) loom that Dee tossed on another one of her purges.

I escaped to the bad Chinese buffet, where I sat down with my plate of dumplings and promptly started to sob ...

.... maybe because I expect nothing and what I expect defines me—that’s a line from a Philip Schultz poem, not my own, and the problem is, I clearly expect something or this wouldn’t bother me so much

.... so maybe because I keep expecting something and nothing is what turns up (which is a Jesse X lyric: more of this: the same nothing. And more days. ... Dazed with sweet air, she'd forgotten how to count in English. Or any language.).

.. or maybe because I hate seeing my mother’s dysfunction on display but also recognize that tossing the evidence won’t make it go away.

... or maybe because I feel like an unrespected stranger that my family doesn’t even bother to try to know.

... or maybe because I feel guilty about abandoning them too.

I guess I could choose to comfort myself with the knowledge that Christmas has been about delusions ever since the Christians co-opted it from the pagans (which they originally did not to celebrate Jesus's birthday but because the Church needed to respond to a heretical claim that Jesus was only a spirit, as opposed to a body. Hence, they turned the pagan revelry into a celebration of their mythical savior's theoretical humanity).

Of course the Puritans outlawed Christmas altogether years later ... but I guess no one told this to the Fox commentators.

Anyway, happy fucking holidays y’all.